I am advised by the Revenue Commissioners that the up to date position with regard to the exercise they are carrying out on Irish registered non-resident companies is as follows: the examination of the 24,095 companies which failed to reply to the notices issued by the Revenue Commissioners in October 1999 is ongoing. As a first step, the companies are being checked against the Companies Registration Office – CRO – list of companies which have been struck off. This work is continuing but, so far, it has identified that 846 of the companies have already been struck off by the Companies Office.
The first stage in the examination of the 9,389 cases in respect of which letters were returned to the Revenue Commissioners indicating that the addressee is unknown also involves a check against the list of companies which have been struck off by the Companies Office. Follow-up action includes establishing whether there are any new addresses on the Companies Office record. The work, so far, has shown that 639 of the companies have been struck off.
Of the companies which have to be cross-checked against the CRO records, approximately 7,000 were incorporated prior to the early 1990s. The process of cross-checking these companies against the Companies Office records is time consuming as, at that time, companies did not have compatible Revenue and CRO numbers. Consequently, searches in relation to those companies have to be carried out manually in each case to identify the relevant CRO number.
Revenue is aiming to complete all examinations in time to forward a list of cases by the end of March 2000 to the registrar of companies for initiation of strike-off procedures.
